


Equinox Pick-Ups

by CobraOnTheCob



Series: Ghost Taxi AUs [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Ghost taxi, Modern AU, Reincarnation, the mortal has fallen in love with the ghost!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27605306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobraOnTheCob/pseuds/CobraOnTheCob
Summary: Katara is a taxi driver. She's seen weird things, but nothing quite like this.Her passenger disappears halfway through the drive.
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Ghost Taxi AUs [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018228
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Equinox Pick-Ups

**Author's Note:**

> It can be set in our world or in 'Republic City', either way i don't care. I made it as ambiguous as possible. 
> 
> Based off of the ghost passenger phenomenon that was going on in Japan a few years back.

There’s a person flagging her down.

Katara pulls over, comes out of the car and opens the door for them because the person’s hands are full with some sort of package. 

“Thank you,” he says as she gets into the driver’s seat.

“Where to?” she asks professionally and she’s shocked to hear his response. 

The man was a paying passenger. It’s odd that he’ll request to be driven to one of the neighborhoods that was wiped out by the tsunami, but she’ll do it.

But halfway to the neighborhood, he disappears.

_What._

Katara didn’t want to look in case he just laid down in the backseat, but she kept driving to his neighborhood. Once there, she looked back and nearly jumped out of her skin.

_He wasn’t there. Or maybe it was how dark it was in the car…_

She opens the door, and then something feels like it passes her. She shivers, jumps back into the taxi, and drives away as fast as she legally can.

* * *

This repeats for the next few days - the man’ll flag her down, she picks him up, and then he disappears. She always finishes the drive and opens the door, she’ll feel something pass her, and then the cycle repeats.

She doesn’t ask for a name, he’s a client that just happens to disappear before she gets back to the neighborhood. 

She tells Suki about this encounter - and Suki shrugs as she casually eats her noodle soup.

“Check the time,” Suki said, and Katara remembered that every time was close to midnight and it was the week of the fall equinox.

Interesting.

But when she goes by the next night, he’s not there. Slightly saddened by this, she keeps going.

* * *

It’s the spring equinox.

He’s back again.

And she does the same thing she did in fall - pick him up, drive him to his neighborhood, and then drop him off even though she couldn’t see him.

And this is the routine they do for years.

* * *

“This is my last year,” Katara says, “I’ve got the money to get into med school.”

“Oh?” the ghost asks. It’s the fall equinox now, three years after her first encounter.

“So I won’t be picking you up anymore,” she says.

“Oh,” the ghost says.

“What’s your name?”

“Zuko,” he says, and then he doesn’t elaborate any further.

“Tell me your story when you come in, okay?” she asks, and the silence lets her know that this is when he disappears.

* * *

He tells her who he was and how he died. 

He was the son of the man who owned one of the big name companies that had questionable business practices - but he moved out as soon as he was financially able to do so (his father was the one that gave him the burn scar). He moved in with his uncle and lived with him until the tsunami hit.

And that’s when he died.

But Zuko’s school was in the area she drove by, and he found that she could pick him up. He only had an hour of being seen by a few, and by the time Katara picks him up, he has fifteen minutes before disappearing.

Of course, more people could see him during the equinoxes and at midnight, but he only went for Katara. 

“I’ll never graduate,” Zuko said quietly on their last day. He’d finished his story the day before, and now Katara was trying not to cry.

“I...I wish we could’ve met,” Katara said, “I would’ve loved to be your friend. Maybe more.”

“More? You fell for a ghost that never graduated high school.” Zuko said with a laugh and Katara laughed with him. She glanced at the clock. Ten minutes left.

“Purity police might attack me if they knew about this,” she said, “But you’re only a year older than my brother, and - “

“Yeah,” Zuko said, “Maybe in another life, we’ll find each other again.”

“Maybe,” Katara said.

“If you’re thinking - “

“No. Way.”

“Okay. I was about to say, live your life to the fullest, then come find me.”

“I can promise that,” Katara said, and suddenly pulled over. Nine minutes left.

“We’re not - “ Zuko’s cut off from saying more as she gets out of the driver’s seat and into the back seat, and she pauses, not sure if she could touch him.

“I wish I could hug you,” Katara said, not wanting to break the illusion of the moment by touching him.

“Just get me home,” he says after a minute of both of them sitting there. Three minutes left.

“I will,” Katara says, “But I want to truly see your face.” She turns on the lights, and she sees his face fully for the first time. Pale skin marred by a burn scar on the left side of his face, hair long enough to cover half of his ears, and a beautiful smile.

“You...like it?”

“You have a lovely face,” she says, “Made even better with a beautiful smile.”

“I hope my next life has a beautiful smile.”

“You will. I’ll find you again, Zuko. I can feel it.”

“Good-bye, Katara,” he says, and Katara realizes that he’s fading away. Their time was up.

“Good-bye, Zuko,” she whispers as she can see the seats clearer and clearer as he fades away. She gets back into the driver’s seat and drives to where she always dropped him off.

* * *

“Grandma was a very quirky woman,” a woman said, holding her two-year old son as she spoke, “After she retired, she would drive at midnight during the equinoxes. Said she had a friend to talk to. She did this for years until she got too old to do this, then started to insist we do this. She got upset when none of us wanted to get up at midnight and drive somewhere, but after one night of sneaking out and nearly scaring us all, she said she was fine and ready to stop these midnight excursions.” 

“No one knows why she did this,” the woman’s wife said as she stood next to her, “All we know is that every equinox she’d go out at midnight and come home with a happy look on her face.”

“Whatever these midnight drives were to her, they made her happy and kept her going,” the woman said, ending the story. Her brother looks at her as she sits down.

“You know, equinoxes are said to be when the Spirit and mortal worlds are closest - “ her brother begins to say.

“That’s true,” the woman says, “But why would a spirit or something make her happy?”

“I don’t know. Just a random observation.”

“The world will never know.”

* * *

Two boys meet on the side of a road.

“This feels familiar,” one of them says.

“What does? We just met in-person a few minutes ago.”

“I think it’s your smile.”

“Interesting. Maybe I just have a common face.”

“Or maybe it’s something more.”

“Like our relationship?”

“If you’re really willing to try it.”

“Of course!”

“Then let’s go back to the city. Maybe we’ll find evidence of past lives.”

“Maybe.”

**Author's Note:**

> Threw in some reincarnation because the story was moving in that direction. Plus, it's nice to think of them falling in love multiple times.
> 
> Also whoever Katara wound up marrying in this AU, it's not Aang. If I don't need Kataang to happen in a fic, it doesn't happen. I don't know who she married (honestly i'm waffling back and forth between Jet and Haru lol) so it's up to the viewer on who it was.


End file.
